Beauty and the Beat Cop

Even as videos of officer-involved shootings and stories of forced rectal exams on drug suspects make national headlines, officials at the New Mexico Law Enforcement Training Academy plan to reduce peace officer cadets’ basic training time by more than 25 percent.

On Monday, 60 cadets, including 18 recruits from the Santa Fe Police Department and two from the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office, are scheduled to begin four months of training before they earn their law enforcement credentials, swear an oath, and pin on a shield. But the training program for those men and women will be six weeks shorter than the academy’s last graduating class.

An SFR investigation has discovered the 650 hours law-enforcement cadets will receive is less than half the 1,600 hours that the state requires cosmetology students to spend in specialized schools before they’re eligible to take a mandatory licensing exam. Even barber students complete 1,200 training hours of basic training.

“I don’t know a lot about barber schools, but from Day 1 our program is intense,” says Law Enforcement Academy Director Jack Jones.

It may be, but SFR’s investigation also found that the 65 hours cadets spend in high stress firearm shooting scenarios, and eight hours in Taser training, is less than the 75 hours that barber students spend studying bacteria strains and learning how to sanitize their scissors, combs and work stations.

While jurisdictions have the option of running their own training academy (and places like Albuquerque and Bernalillo County do), many peace officers only get academy training from the state. New Mexico laws even allows cops to patrol the streets with a gun and badge long before earning their formal credentials. Commissioned officers may to work up to 12 months before they’re required to enter the academy or lose their job.

“It’s more for the rural towns. It gives them the opportunity to hire a guy and make sure they’re what they need for their community while they’re waiting to get into the academy,” says Jones. “There hasn’t been an issue with it in the past.”

But Jones is uncomfortable with commissioned officers who haven’t been to any kind of school being issued a gun and a badge “out there making traffic stops.”

“What is the liability there?” he asks.

The new 16-week program has widespread support from members of the New Mexico Association of Chiefs of Police and the New Mexico Sheriffs’ Association. Curriculum changes, the top cops claim, were long overdue and still accomplish the goals of preparing cadets to serve their communities.

Planning for the shorter course, which costs taxpayers almost $5,000 per cadet, began in July 2011 with three primary goals: optimize students’ time, reduce training redundancies and eliminate some administrative code rules that used to require instructors to teach obsolete laws.

“This was not a knee-jerk reaction, it was a process,” Department of Public Safety Cabinet Secretary Gorden Eden told New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy Board members during a rule change hearing last September. “It was not done in isolation.”

In fact, the new syllabus won unanimous approval from the same board members just last month. It was designed with input from academy alum, instructors and trainers from all eight of the state’s satellite training academies, Jones says.

The new rules also give four full time trainers and numerous experts loaned to the academy from agencies around the state the flexibility to adapt their materials and adjust to changes in technology and training trends. And New Mexico’s basic course will still be longer than similar programs taught in Denver, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah. Regionally, only Arizona’s program is closer to the national average of 19 weeks reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2006.

“It’s up to us to ensure that we have well-trained officers on the street protecting our citizens,” says Santa Fe Police Chief Raymond Rael. “So we’ve increased our hiring standards.”

In
Santa Fe, both the police and sheriff’s deputy recruits have to spend
three to four weeks in orientation before they check into the dorms at
the state academy. Their basic training hours do not include the dozen
hours they spend on prerequisites like First Aid and CPR, or the hours
jogging, lifting and shooting they need to meet stringent entrance
requirements.

And the rookies’ initial training doesn’t end after graduation.

Santa
Fe County Sheriff’s Office training Sgt. Diego Lucero says when his
deputies return from the academy, they’re teamed with field training
officers for another three to four months.

When they eventually earn a solo shift, Lucero says they’ll remain under close supervision for at least a year.

“It’s
almost better that they get back from the academy earlier now,” says
Lucero. “That way they can spend extra time in the field getting on the
job training.”

Rael says all he wants from his recruits when they
return from the academy is to have a good grasp of the basics. For the
chief that means an understanding of New Mexico laws, arrest procedures
and the judicial system.

While
law enforcement brass is confident in the new curriculum, SFR found
others who are not as keen on the idea of rushing cadets out of the
academy and onto the streets.

Santa
Fe Attorney Mark Donatelli, for example, filed a lawsuit for 77-year
old retired police officer Robert Dominguez after he was shot by SFPD
officer Charles Laramie in Santa Fe last March. (District Attorney
Angela “Spence” Pacheco determined the shooting was justified. Dominguez
died last week from what his family says was complications from the
gunshot wounds.) Donatelli thinks trainers should determine if there are
any systematic deficiencies before they reduce the number of basic
training hours.

“If
deficiencies in training contributed to those incidents, then cutting
back training would be counter-productive,” says Donatelli. “If they’re
rushing cadets through to fill department vacancies, I think that’s a
little penny-wise, pound foolish. The departments will just end up
having to mop up the mess later.”

For
Rep. Bill Rehm, R-Bernalillo, reducing the number of training hours is
not problematic since the cadets still have to demonstrate firearm
proficiency, physical strength, and score a passing grade on the written
Law Enforcement Officers Certified Exam.

“We’ve
got to get these guys on the street,” say Rehm, a retired sheriff’s
deputy and former academy instructor “That’s where they really learn
about policing.”

Rep.
Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee
with Rehm, says he wasn’t aware of the curriculum changes until SFR
called him. For now, Egolf says he’s okay with eliminating redundancies,
but suggests the extra time be used on other topics like deescalating
volatile call-outs with mentally ill suspects.

“There’s
been a push from the legislature in the last couple of years to get
increased training specifically to deal with officer-involved shootings,
namely with returning veterans who may be suffering from a mental
disorder,” says Egolf. “It’s better for officers to know what to do just
short of firing their weapon.”

NM Law Enforcement Training Academy Director Jack Jones.

Mark Woodward

To
shave time off the basic program, Jones and his team have cut out
duplicate instruction material. In June, when he was promoted to academy
director, Jones found, for example, that interrogation techniques were
taught across several training blocks, including accident investigations
and response to domestic violence call outs.

“Our
cadets will still get 75 hours of accident investigation training. We
won’t just be teaching them advanced accident reconstruction
techniques,” says Jones, a retired Army Colonel with three decades of
law enforcement experience. “Sixty percent of the program will still
involve dynamic hands-on scenarios.”

High-stress
firearm simulations, Jones says, allow instructors to determine if
cadets have incorporated their classroom knowledge into stressful day
and night situations that might require them to deploy some type of use
of force. It is, according to Jones, the best way for cadets to learn.

“We
could teach 100,000 scenarios, and not cover all of them. I want them
to be confident when they respond to threats,” says Jones. “When they go
back home they need to be able to defend their lives and the lives of
others.”

Jones wants
applicants to be stronger coming into the academy, so they won’t have to
spend valuable time in strength conditioning. The cadets, he says, will
still need to pull a 190-pound dummy, push a police vehicle, andscale a 6-foot wall wearing a 20-pound training belt by the end of the program. Still, after the first physical fitness test using the new standards only four women qualified for the 187th cadet class.

At
the end of the day, retired Albuquerque Deputy Police Chief Michael
Castro, who says that he never had to fire his weapon at an offender
during his 26-year career, tells SFR he isn’t worried about the shorter
program jeopardizing public safety.

“When I went through my academy it was only 16 weeks, and I turned out fine,” says Castro.

For
career law enforcement officers, the training never stops. Like
barbers, who have to earn continuing education credits, certified peace
officers in New Mexico are required to complete at least 40 hours of
additional training every two years. And the freshly trained rookies
aren’t off the hook either. Before they even pop a button on their new
uniforms they’ll need another 20 hours in state-mandated courses like
safe vehicle pursuits.